Alicia Vikander's Real Name: Alicia Amanda Vikander

Quick answer: Alicia Vikander's full name is Alicia Amanda Vikander. She was born on October 3, 1988, in Gothenburg, Sweden. Alicia Vikander is her real name, and Amanda is her middle name. She won the Academy Award for best supporting actress for The Danish Girl (2015). She also starred as the android Ava in Ex Machina and as Lara Croft in Tomb Raider (2018) (Library of Congress; Britannica).

Real name and early life

The Library of Congress name authority files her as "Vikander, Alicia, 1988-." It cites "Alicia Vikander; Alicia Amanda Vikander; b. Oct. 3, 1988 in Gothenburg, Sweden; actress." Britannica gives the same birth date and places Gothenburg in Västra Götaland county.

According to Britannica, she is the daughter of stage actress Maria Fahl Vikander and psychiatrist Svante Vikander. She first trained in dance at the Royal Swedish Ballet School. Injuries that required foot and back surgery led her to turn to acting.

Career highlights

Vikander began in Swedish short films and television. Her most memorable early role was Jossan Tegebrandt Björn on the TV drama Andra Avenyn (Second Avenue, 2007–08). Her feature debut, Till det som är vackert (Pure, 2009), won her a Guldbagge Award, Sweden's national film award, for best actress.

Her international profile grew in 2012 with her first English-language film, Anna Karenina, in which she played Kitty. That year she also starred in the Oscar-nominated Danish drama A Royal Affair (En kongelig affære). She appeared in the WikiLeaks film The Fifth Estate (2013) and in 2014 in Testament of Youth, Son of a Gun, and Seventh Son.

Her big year was 2015. She played Gerda Wegener, the wife of artist Lili Elbe, in The Danish Girl, a film loosely based on the Wegeners' lives, and won the Oscar for best supporting actress. The same year she was praised as the android Ava in Ex Machina. In 2016 she starred in Jason Bourne and The Light Between Oceans, as an anguished wife, opposite Michael Fassbender, whom she married in 2017.

Later roles include Lara Croft in Tomb Raider (2018), the Arthurian adventure The Green Knight (2021), Blue Bayou (2021), in which she played the American wife of a Korean American immigrant facing deportation, and the HBO miniseries Irma Vep (2022), in which she played an American actress cast in a remake of a French classic.

Name notes for searchers

Alicia is her given first name, Amanda her middle name, and Vikander her family surname from her father, Svante Vikander. She acts under her own name in both Swedish and English-language productions.